The South Korean defense ministry has dismissed claims suggested in a U.S. report which said North Korea is building a submarine capable of launching ballistic missiles.
Seoul's defense ministry official says Pyongyang's submarine would need to weigh at least 3-thousand tons in order to be able to launch a ballistic missile.
But the largest identified on record so far in the North Korean Navy only weighs 18-hundred tons.
This comes a day after a U.S. report said a new type of missile launch tube was observed on a North Korean submarine, hinting at the possibility that the regime may be close to developing a ballistic missile submarine.